Saturday, May 6, 2017

Top 8 Popular National Lies that Won’t Die in Nigeria

In Nigeria, once lies and historical myths take roots, they
are almost always impossible to uproot. But the stubborn persistence of lies is
no reason to give up on correcting them. Find below 8 oft-repeated lies with
the most staying power in Nigeria.

1. That Wole Soyinka
had a third class degree. After it emerged that Dino Melaye earned a Third
Class degree from Ahmadu Bello University, scores of social media commentators
dredged up the old lie that even Professor Wole Soyinka had a Third Class
degree from the University of Ibadan. There are two lies in this claim. The
first lie is that Soyinka got a Third Class degree. No, he actually got an
Upper Second Class honors degree. The second lie is that he graduated from the
University of Ibadan. He graduated from the University of Leeds in the UK.

Professor Soyinka did NOT get a Third Class from the University of Ibadan

He started his undergraduate studies at the then University
College, Ibadan, but transferred to the University of Leeds after only two
years at Ibadan. He spent another two years at Leeds to earn his BA in English
Literature. Soyinka and his classmates at the University College Ibadan have
repeatedly denied that he graduated from Ibadan and that he earned a Third
Class degree. But the lies have taken firm roots and are now impossible to uproot.

2. That the American
government predicted Nigeria’s disintegration in 2015. That’s a big fat
lie. It’s true that a few private US think factories predicted that given the
potentially contentious outcome of the 2015 election, there was reason to
expect that Nigeria could be consumed by fratricidal in-fighting that could
dissolve the union.

The most widely shared view on this was contained in a
project by two Air War College students. Students in the school were given
various world scenarios that could impact crude oil delivery to the US. They
were then required to come up with strategies to get around this. One of the
scenarios was the break-up of Nigeria. In other words, Nigerians created a
“fact” out of a fictional, hypothetical college project.

3. That America calls
itself “god’s own country.” As I’ve pointed out in previous columns, America’s motto isn’t “God’s own country.” It is
“In God we trust.” “God’s own country” is an old American English expression
for one’s place of birth— or for a beautiful, forested rural area. The “country”
in the expression refers to “rural area,” not a territory occupied by a nation.

It was usual in the
past for rural, wooded small towns in America to welcome visitors with the inscription
“Welcome to God’s own country” on their signposts, which in modern English would be "welcome to our beautiful small town." Some small towns in Texas
(and elsewhere in the South) still have those signs. Perhaps, that’s what
caused Nigerians to assume that America’s motto is “God’s own country.”

4. That Sokoto calls
itself “born to rule.” At no point in history has Sokoto ever called itself
“born to rule.” As I pointed out in my January 10, 2015 column titled “The Stubborn, Undying ‘Born to Rule’ Falsehood in Nigeria’s Political Discourse,”
“Sokoto State’s official license-plate catchphrase from the beginning was and
still is ‘Cibiyar daular usmaniyya,’
which is Hausa for the nucleus or the navel of the Usman Danfodio caliphate.
The English version of the slogan has been rendered as ‘Seat of the Caliphate,’
which I think is a great idiomatic translation.”

5. That Usman
Danfodiyo brought Islam to Nigeria. No, he didn’t. The presence of Islam in
Nigeria, as I pointed out in my March 22, 2014 column titled “Nigeria’s Curricular Institutionalization of Mass Amnesia,” preceded the Usman Danfodio
jihad by several centuries. What Danfodio did was to reform Islam where it
already existed. And this happened only in the 19th century. The earliest
record of Islamic presence in northern Nigeria (in the ancient Kanem- Borno
Empire to be specific) dates back to the 9th century, that is, just two
centuries away from the birth of Islam in the Arabian Peninsula.

In Hausaland, Islam had been widespread since at least the
13th century, and in Borgu, Nupe land, Yoruba land, etc from about the 14th
century. Islam came to West Africa primarily through the trans-Saharan trade,
which lasted from about the 8th century to the 16th century. The trade saw Arab
traders travel from Arabia through North Africa to parts of West Africa in
search of gold, salt, and human labor.

6. That money from
the North funded oil exploration in the South. Professor Ango Abdullahi
actually repeated this lie recently. He said this, ironically, while exhorting
Emir Sanusi II to “go and read history.” The truth is that not a dime of
northern Nigeria’s money contributed to oil exploration in the Niger Delta.

When oil was discovered in commercial quantities in Oloibiri
in 1956, Shell bore the financial burden for the exploration. Other Euro-American oil companies later joined in oil exploration. It wasn’t until
1973 that the Nigerian federal government acquired 30 percent shares in oil
companies. By 1973, Northern Nigeria had ceased to exist; it had been divided
into states.

In any case, colonial records show that the biggest
motivation for amalgamating northern and southern Nigeria was because northern
Nigeria wasn’t financially self-sustaining and the British Imperial Government
said it would never subsidize colonial administration anywhere in Africa. So
Lord Lugard amalgamated the two regions and used the surplus from the south to
sustain the north. It’s illogical to say that a region that wasn’t financially
self-sustaining financed oil exploration in the Niger Delta.

7. That northern
Christians resisted Danfodio’s attempt to convert them to Islam. This is a
fusion of distinct historical memories. Usman Danfodio’s jihad did not seek to
convert non-Muslims to Islam. If it did, Zuru would be religiously
indistinguishable from Sokoto or Gwandu, given their geographic closeness. Danfodio
only sought to “purify” Islam where it already existed, and used non-Muslim
areas as a source for slaves. Since Islam forbids the enslavement of fellow
Muslims, it wasn’t in the interest on the jihadists for surrounding non-Muslim
areas to be converted to Islam. That would stop the source of cheap slave
labor.

So it would make more sense for northern Christians (who
weren’t Christians at the time) to say their ancestors resisted slave raids.
It’s also true that they resisted Ahmadu Bello’s subtle and overt campaigns to
Islamize them in the 1960s.

8. That Donald Trump
insulted Nigerians and Africans. Trump said so many terrible things about
several people, and isn’t beyond saying terrible things about Nigerians and
Africans, but he simply didn’t say anything about Nigerians or Africans. Not
once during his presidential campaign. All the Nigerian- and African-bashing quotes attributed to him are hoaxes.

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About Me

Dr. Farooq Kperogi is a professor, journalist, newspaper columnist, author, and blogger based in Greater Atlanta, USA. He received his Ph.D. in communication from Georgia State University's Department of Communication where he taught journalism for 5 years and won the top Ph.D. student prize called the "Outstanding Academic Achievement in Graduate Studies Award." He earned his Master of Science degree in communication (with a minor in English) from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and won the Outstanding Master's Student in Communication Award.

He earned his B.A. in Mass Communication (with minors in English and Political Science) from Bayero University, Kano, Nigeria, where he won the Nigerian Television Authority Prize for the Best Graduating Student.

Dr. Kperogi worked as a reporter and news editor, as a researcher/speech writer at the (Nigerian) President's office, and as a journalism lecturer at Kaduna Polytechnic and Ahmadu Bello University before relocating to the United States.

He was the Managing Editor of the Atlanta Review of Journalism History, a refereed academic journal. He was also Associate Director of Research at Georgia State University's Center for International Media Education (CIME).

He is currently an Associate Professor of Journalism and Emerging Media at the School of Communication and Media, Kennesaw State University, Georgia's fastest-growing and third largest university. (Kennesaw is a suburb of Atlanta). He also writes two weekly newspaper columns: "Notes From Atlanta" in the Abuja-based DailyTrust on Saturday (formerly Weekly Trust) and "Politics of Grammar" in the DailyTrust on Sunday (formerly Sunday Trust).

In April 2014 Dr. Kperogi was honored as the Outstanding Alumnus of the University of Louisiana's Department of Communication. His research has also won international awards, such as the 2016 Top-Rated Research Paper Award at the 17th Symposium on Online Journalism at the University of Texas, Austin, USA.